God of the Living

Job 19: 23-27a
Luke 20: 27-38

As Jesus is teaching in the temple, a variety of challenges confronts him. The Sadducees are questioning his authority and attempting to entrap him in a net of his own words. The scribes and chief priests are amazed at all the things he has been teaching such as paying taxes to the emperor and have fallen silent which allow the Sadducees their chance to prove Jesus as a false prophet with improper teachings.

A little background is in order for everyone to understand why this is so important to the Sadducees. The Pharisees and the Sadducees had a huge difference in opinion on what happens after we die. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but the Sadducees believed that when a person died that was it; nothing came afterward. Therefore, when they ask Jesus about the resurrection, they deliberately give an absurd example to try to show why the belief in the bodily resurrection is faulty and wrong. What no one expects, Sadducee or Pharisee, is what Jesus ends up telling them!

As the Sadducees lay out their scenario for Jesus, you can almost hear the scorn in their words and the laughter of the nearby listeners. In a levirate marriage, there was a compassionate law that stated if a woman's husband died the husband's brother would be obligated to marry this woman and raise any children that had been left behind. It was a way to provide a home and security for widows and children who had no ability to fend or feed themselves without a man at their side. This was a law that Moses himself had handed down, and now the Sadducees were going to use it against Jesus. Let's see how he gets out of this one, they were thinking!

Jesus responds by teaching the Sadducees what Moses meant and interpreting their scriptures. For the Sadducees, the Scriptures were limited to Torah or the first five books of the Bible. Jesus honors their tradition by also using the Torah in his explanation. This is the wonderful thing about Jesus. Even when he is putting people in their place and teaching all of us something new and wonderful, he makes sure to honor what has come before his teachings.

Jesus tells the Sadducees that Moses himself said that God reveals himself to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Why is this significant? All three of those men are dead by the time Moses is confronted with God at the burning bush when those words are spoken. Therefore, if the Sadducees were right that life ends upon our death, then why would God remember and speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Jesus tells everyone there that our God is the God of the living and every person that has come before us and all of us now, and all of us to come are known to God and part of God's plan.

This puts the Sadducees' teachings into complete disarray! Jesus has just announced that there is most certainly life after death and he has used the Torah to prove it! He proves his point by mentioning that God does not say, "At one time I was the God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but now they are dead and gone though I remember them with great fondness." No. God says, "I AM the God of Abraham. I AM the God of Isaac. I AM the God of Jacob." God uses the present tense to announce that God is and will always be the God of those three men. Jesus drives home his point by saying, "For to God all of them are alive."

God is a God of the living, not of the dead. Why does that matter to us? What does it mean for all of us sitting here today?

There are many times in our lives when we feel that God is distant from us and lacks empathy for our lives. We have been hurt by the world and we have felt alone and scared. We have major questions to bring to God, and we're unsure if we'll ever get a proper answer. Jesus assures us that God understands our questions, understands our pain, and although it may take a long time and it may not be in this life that we have every question answered and every wound soothed - eventually God will help and heal us. God is God of the living, not of the dead.

This is a reminder to us of all those that have passed, they are not truly gone from our lives. We will never lay eyes again on them in this life, but after we pass away we will be able to see them again. Jesus also reminds us that this life is different from the one we will have in the afterlife. He says that it will not matter who's wife the woman was because that is no longer important after death. What is important on earth is not always important in heaven.

Time and again, Jesus reminds us that riches accumulated on earth will bring us nothing in heaven. We are told that the power we have on earth will not give us power in heaven. We are told that the people we know on earth that make us seem important will matter little once we are dead. There will be new things that are important, there will no longer be power struggles or any need to have money to live. In a way, the Sadducees were right that we should live out our lives with joy and the expectancy that there is only this life. We should not let fear stop us from doing what we've always wanted to do and we should not hold fast to our money for a rainy day because tomorrow could be our funeral.

But Jesus also reminds us in this passage that after our death, there is life to be lived even if it is different from anything we've experienced here on earth. And so we are called to live life fully and completely, treasuring what we have but not holding on to it too tightly, while at the same time looking forward to eternal life that will be different and better in so many ways.

Our God is a God of the living, not of the dead. There is more to this journey than what we can see and touch and hear. Jesus promises that every person is alive in God's eyes and that is a reassurance that someday we will experience the greatest of reunions with those that have gone before us and with those yet to be born. What a wonderful promise we have been given!

Amen.